Stochastic Simulation has unveiled ResAssure, saying it can do in 24 hours what takes other simulators months.
Enabling faster and more accurate analysis of dynamic subsurface geological data will help reduce the risk in the development of oil and gas fields by narrowing the range of uncertainty in reserves estimates.
This, in turn, will lead to better production and financing decisions as well as the return on investment benefits that come with it.
"What it means is previously if the board needed a result it would take three to 12 months of computing," Stochastic Simulation chief technology officer Dr Andrew Wadsley said.
He said the answers could be had much sooner with ResAssure - in some cases even overnight.
"Because we can compute so fast now we can do almost real-time modelling of seismic," Wadsley, a reservoir engineering expert of more than 37 years, said.
So how has Stochastic managed to make such a giant leap in processing capability?
Simulations essentially involve a large number of calculations.
Therefore, one way to speed up a simulation is to throw greater computing resources at it. The more computing power, the more calculations can be conducted.
However, there comes a point where simply throwing more computer resources at the problem is no longer cost-effective.
The other way to speed up simulations is to find ways to reduce the number of calculations and this is what Stochastic has done.
Wadlsey said traditional geological simulations divided the rock up into small cubes.
As a result,they had to deal with massive matrix equations.
"One of the big innovations we've done is that we've avoided having to do these big matrix calculations," Wadlsey said
Another way Stochastic streamlined the simulation process was in the number of time steps it ran depending on where it was looking.
For example, near the well where there is a lot happening, the simulation has to consider a lot of time steps. Well away from the well bore, fewer need to be looked at.
A third approach was to use polygonal grid cells, which also helped reduce the number of calculations.
Of course, it sounds easy when said like that.
Wadsley said he first started thinking of the ResAssure approach back in 2005 and started Stochastic Simulation in 2008 to develop it.
It has taken five years for Stochastic to get to the commercial version.
Another way the software can save companies is through the systems it is run on.
Wadsley said when the company had first started down its ResAssure path, giant processing centres had been the main option.
Stochastic has taken to running its software through the Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform.
It used the platform to carry out 1 million realisations in one day for a real field Cartesian model of 200,000 grid cells against 28 sensitivity parameters using 40 standard processing cores on the AWS platform.
Those AWS centres are dotted around the world. In the Australian region there is one in Sydney and one in Singapore.
At the moment, clients can hire Stochastic as a consultant and part of its service will be to use its ResAssure software to turn around rapid simulation results.
CEO Graham Griffiths said that as clients became more familiar with the system it might be made available on a pay per use basis.
Stochastic was able to take Griffiths on thanks to some Australian government funding.
He is a 35-year veteran of the IT industry.
